“[The] Serpent is also the wise word of Eve. This is the mystery of Eden: this is the river that flows out of Eden. This is also the mark that was set on Cain… [and] this serpent is also he who appeared in the latter days in human form at the time of Herod…”

- Hippolytus

The Mark of Cain

A few years back, workers toiling in an underground chamber beneath a medieval cathedral in Geneva, Switzerland uncovered a strange mosaic tile floor, thought to be of great antiquity. The mosaic depicted an icon beloved by the Merovingians: the Black Sun. The Priory of Sion claims that one of its principle commandaries is in Geneva, and if so, this may be it. For hidden away in the cathedral’s recesses, far from public view, is one of Christendom’s strangest set of relics: a plate and cup connected to the legends of Cain, Solomon, Christ, and Lucifer.

In an ancient variation on Biblical tradition, the so-called “mark of Cain” - believed to have been inflicted upon Adam’s first son - is said to have been caused by a stone that fell from Lucifer’s crown during the war in Heaven and bounced off Cain‘s forehead. According to this lore, the mark was in the shape of a red serpent. The jewel from Lucifer’s crown became a sacred relic, and was handed down dynastically from father to son, eventually coming into the possession of King Solomon. He hired a master craftsman to carve the huge stone into a plate and drinking vessel. According to this same legend, these very utensils were later used by Christ at the Last Supper. This story, bizarre though it may be, is emblematic of the unambiguously Luciferian symbolism that recurs constantly in regards to lore of the Grail bloodline - symbolism that has been consciously cultivated by the Merovingians throughout their history.

The Melusine

Among the most overtly Luciferian lore relating to the Grail bloodline is the strange saga of Melusine, a woman said to be half-human and half-serpent. Her father was reputedly Godfroi de Bouillon, former King of Jerusalem (or “Defender of the Holy Sepulcher”, as he preferred to be called), and prime mover behind the formation of both the Priory of Sion and the Knights Templar. It was due to de Bouillon - a descendant of Jesus Christ, King David, and the historical figure of Lohengrin - that the Templars adopted the Cross of Lorraine as their esoteric emblem. This symbol is known in Germany as the Cross of Lothringen, or Lohengrin (the origin of the name “Lorraine”), and was said to have been emblazoned upon Lohengrin’s shield. Godfroi was succeeded as King of Jerusalem by his brother Baldwin, who in turn was succeeded by Fulk the Black, a member of the prominent Angevin dynasty. It was Fulk who married Godfroi’s daughter, the mythical Melusine. As the story goes, upon her betrothal to Fulk, Melusine made a very unusual request. She agreed to marry him, but only upon this strange condition: that one night per week, on the Sabbath, she was to be allowed absolute solitude and privacy. On this night her husband was neither to speak to her, nor to enter her bedchambers. Fulk agreed to the bizarre codicil, and by all reports they shared a very happy union for the first several years.

In time, however, Fulk’s curiosity began to get the best of him. He wondered why his lovely bride required time apart from him, and what exactly she did on those nights. Unable to resist the temptation, Fulk burst into her bedroom one of these nights, only to be confronted by a terrifying visage. His wife had transformed herself into a figure that was half-serpent. The entirety of her lower extremities took on the appearance of a massive, bluish-white colored snake. Melusine was so horrified at being discovered that she keeled over dead. It was said that her ghost (in half-serpent form) haunted the site thereafter, and could be heard late at night, slithering about behind the locked door.

In a variation on this tale, Fulk was said instead to have peered through the keyhole of his wife’s chambers on one of her private nights. Inside he saw Melusine sitting in a bath, her body covered with scales from the waist down, her legs having turned into the tail of a fish. Deeply disturbed by what he had seen, Fulk was eventually compelled to question his wife. Upon learning that her trust had been violated, Melusine departed, never to be seen again.

As bizarre as such tales are, many European monarchs took great pride in citing Melusine in their family trees. In fact, according to Sabine Baring-Gould’s Myths of the Middle Ages, a number of royal families altered their genealogies in order to claim descent from the “illustrious” serpent lady. Her story became wildly popular in France, Germany and Spain, and for a time was seldom out of print.

In the early, happy days of Melusine’s marriage, she gave birth to a son, Geoffrey de Anjou. Geoffrey would eventually grow up to be the first Plantagenet King of England. Present at Geoffrey's birth was Bernard of Clairvaux, the famous Cistercian abbot, and yet another founding father of the Knights Templar. Upon first seeing the baby Geoffrey, Bernard made this strange pronouncement: “From the Devil he has come, and to the Devil he’ll return.” Though the Melusine saga may have been a beloved tale in parts of Europe, such was not the case everywhere. The tale seems to have been equally well-known in England, but not equally well-liked. In his book The Conquering Family, Thomas B. Costain writes:

“The counts of Anjou and their lovely but wicked wives gained such an unsavory reputation over the centuries that the people of England were appalled when they found that one of them (Geoffrey) was to become King of England.”

This notwithstanding, the House of Plantagenet provided England with some of its most noteworthy monarchs, many of whom admitted to having a soft spot in their hearts for their mythical matriarch, Melusine. Richard the Lionhearted even cited his purportedly Luciferian heritage as being the reason why his family “lacked the natural affections of mankind.”

The story of Melusine had such an impact on the French psyche that to this very day in some parts of France, “Melusines” (ginger cookies shaped like a woman with serpent’s tail) are sold on May Day. The fact that so many people have seemingly taken this unusual tale at face value seems rather unfathomable to the modern mind. Stranger still, why would a family putatively descended from Christ and King David so publicly include in their family tree the figure of a woman half-human and half-serpent?

It would appear that due to the highly improbable nature of this tale, it has been dismissed entirely by scholars and historians as pure folklore. Yet the members of this family (the Grail family) are no strangers to the adroit implementation of symbolism. Never has their use of symbolism been gratuitous. It is employed to reveal to the initiated precisely what it conceals from the uninitiated. And the imagery associated with Melusine is very specific in its connotations: it refers to the patriarch Adam’s first wife Lillith, who is depicted in cabalistic tradition as a naked human female with a serpent’s tail for her lower half. For us, this suggests that the Merovingians were consciously trying to keep alive an esoteric tradition - one which holds great secrets relating to the true nature of their sacred bloodline.

Lucifer’s Children

Conventional wisdom has it that the Grail bloodline is sacred because it came from Christ, a man still considered by much of the world to be the true son of God. And yet the dynasty of kings who descended from this bloodline were known as sorcerer-kings, some of whom hinted or even stated outright that they were in fact descendants of Lucifer. A number of authors claim this thesis is true, but they are predominantly hardcore Christian conspiracy theorists, and stop well short of explaining why they believe this, or of giving any tangible details to substantiate their claims. Says author Fritz Springmeier in The Bloodlines of the Illuminati: “In typical Gnostic fashion, descendants of the Merovingians claim to have the blood of both Christ and Satan in their veins.” Given the fact that this theme (or a variation of it) recurs with some regularity, and given that it would appear to be consistent with the sort of dualism which permeats the story of this bloodline, we began to wonder if there might not be some traditions from which such a notion could have arisen. At length, several were discovered.

Firstly, let us recall that this bloodline descended from a figure who equates with the biblical Cain. In certain rabbinic lore, we come across the very interesting notion that Cain was not the son of Adam, but of Samael. It was thought that when Samael appeared to Eve as a serpent, he seduced her. The fruit of that union was Cain. Samael was a fallen angel, essentially the Judaic Lucifer. If the Merovingians knew of this version of the story (which they no doubt did), and believed it, it could be the basis of their alleged assertion that they possessed the blood of both Christ and Lucifer. This notion is expressed in a famous poem by Charles Peguy, which states:

“The arms of Jesus are the Cross of Lorraine,

Both the blood in the artery and the blood in the vein,

Both the source of grace and the clear fountaine;

The arms of Satan are the Cross of Lorraine,

And the same artery and the same vein,

And the same blood and the troubled fountaine.”

Some apocryphal versions of the story of Cain proclaim that he was the son of Adam and Lillith, not Eve. Before becoming Adam’s first wife, Lillith had been the consort of God before coming to Earth as a fallen angel. The full details of her story are probably too well-known to bear repeating here, but it is interesting that of the two alternate traditions concerning Cain’s parentage, both involve the Luciferian Nephilim bloodline. Also of interest is the fact that the lily is known to have taken its name from Lillith, and the heraldic device emblematic of this bloodline is the fleur-de-lys (widely accepted as symbolic of the lily). Could not this symbol, viewed within this context, in fact be the Flower of Lillith?

The Lillith/Samael connection is also pertinent in regards to our investigation because both Lillith and Samael are traditionally held to be the parents of the demon Asmodeus.1 Not only is Asmodeus the dominant image (shown mirroring Christ) in Rennes-le-Chateau, he is said to have played the central role in building the Temple of Solomon, the edifice from which the Knights Templar took their name. The recurrence of this strange figure in Grail lore has long perplexed observers, yet it would appear that both he and the descendants of Cain may in fact have shared a kindred ancestry. It is even said in some traditions that it was Asmodeus whom Moses called upon to part the Red Sea, and not God. Though portrayed as a demon or devil figure, his name reveals that he may not always have been viewed as such, for “Asmodeus” translates simply to “the Lord God.” (“Ashma” means “lord”, and “deus” means “god.”)

Luciferian imagery is implied the presence of “the Elohim” of The Book of Genesis, where they are quoted as saying: “Let us make man in our image.” The word “Elohim” is translated simply as “God” in the King James Bible, but it is clearly a plural noun, as plural words in the Hebrew language end in the letters “im.” In fact, “the Elohim” are widely believed by many researchers to be identical with the Nephilim, the fallen angels known as the Watchers in The Book of Enoch. It is believed that “Elohim” comes from the much more ancient Babylonian word, “Ellu”, which means “Shining Ones.” This phrase has a distinctively Luciferian connotation, because the name “Lucifer” literally means “lightbearer.” And the descendants of Cain, who were the deified kings of Sumeria, were sometimes called “the Ari”, a term which also meant “Shining Ones.” The Sumerian pictogram for “Ari” or “Ar”, as noted earlier, is an inverted pentagram, a symbol long associated with Lucifer. And the phrase “Shining Ones” would be a very apt description for the descendants of Enoch’s fallen angels, who were said to have hair as white as snow, pale eyes, and pale skin which seemed literally to glow and fill the room with light. The Sumerian Ari are almost always depicted as wearing crowns bearing horns, and some of their descendants were reputed in legend to have had horns. For instance, the most famous statue of Moses (that of Michelangelo) depicts him with horns atop his forehead, not wholly inappropriate for someone who may be a blood relation of Asmodeus. Theologians protest that they are not horns, but merely rays of light. Yet even rays of light suggest a Luciferian subtext. Alexander the Great declared himself the son of a god, and he too was said to have horns. In fact, to this very day, if you talk to people in certain Iranian villages (who speak of his invasion as though it happened last week), they will tell you in all solemnity Alexander had horns, and that he wore his hair long to cover this up.

One cannot but admit that Cain seems to have engendered his own tradition, as evidenced in a strange Gnostic sect called the Cainites (named after the race of Cain’s descendants). Like the Carpocrateans, the Cainites believed that no one could be saved except by “making the journey through everything.” Epiphanius describes them as a group “consecrating... lustful or illegal acts to various heavenly beings” as a sort of sacrament. Interestingly, many scholars compare them to Satanists.

The extent to which the Merovingians knew of these alternate traditions is uncertain. Whether or not they believed in them is more uncertain still, yet it remains likely that they both knew about these traditions and took them quite seriously. To this very day, the coat of arms of the capital of the Merovingian empire, Stenay, bears an image of the Devil. In fact, the original name of Stenay was “Satanicum.” And the area Rennes-le-Chateau also contains many geographical references to the Devil. In addition to the Asmodeus statue at the church, there is an ancient stone monument in Rennes-le-Bains called “the Devil’s Armchair”, and there are hundreds of years worth of local legends pertaining to the appearance of the Devil on numerous occasions.

Seeing that this Luciferian legacy played such a prominent role in the Merovingian mythos, we wondered if traces of it could be detected in the Bible and other related texts. In short order, we were able to discern an abundance of such material. What caught our attention the most were a number of stories which seemed very suggestive of the idea that certain key patriarchs were descendants of the Watchers. Take, for example, the story of Abraham, the first proselyte ofonotheism, and a figure central in all three major monotheistic religions. His birth was, according to apochryphal traditions, foreseen in the stars by none other than King Nimrod, who felt threatened by the birth of Abraham, and effected a “slaughter of the innocents”-type scenario, in which 70,000 male children were put to death - in an effort to neutralize him.2 Consequently, his mother fled to the wilderness to give birth to him in a cave. As author Louis Ginzberg states in Legends of the Jews, upon Abraham’s birth, “The whole cave was filled with the light of the child’s countenance, as with the splendor of the Sun...” Compare this description with that in The Book of Enoch, where it was said that Lamech’s son Noah, “...illuminated all the house, like the Sun; the whole house abounded with light.”

A further indication that Abraham was of the Nephilim bloodline is that according to this version of the story, Abraham’s mother left him in that cave alone for twenty days, and upon returning, she did not even recognize him because he had “grown very big.” He was as large as a full-grown man and could both speak and walk - surely an indication of some divine supernatural ancestry. In fact, later chroniclers state unambiguously that Abraham was a giant. Like certain of his illustrious forebears, Abraham was also a great builder. Legends of the Jews tells us that:

“[Abraham] built a city for [his sons through his slave Hagar], surrounded by an iron wall, so high that the sun could not shine into the city... Also Abraham taught them the black art, wherewith they held sway over demons and spirits.”

Here we have a preeminent biblical patriarch as a practicioner of black magic, the forbidden art taught to man by the Watchers. And Abraham is not unique in this regard. Later figures such as Moses and Solomon were also said to be sorcerers. If three of the most important Old Testament figures were practicioners of the black arts, might not one reasonably conclude that an occult doctrine or tradition was perhaps central to the creed that eventually evolved into Judaism, and later Christianity? We will explore this idea (and the figure of Abraham) in greater depth later on, but first we will revisit the story of Jacob.

It was the tale of Jacob’s Ladder that provided the point of departure for most of our subsequent research, and we have since discovered alternate versions of the tale in which the symbolism is much more vivid. For example, in an apocryphal book called The Ladder of Jacob, 1:1-6, we read:

“He found a place and laying his head on a stone, he slept there, for the sun had gone down. He had a dream and behold a ladder was fixed on the earth, whose top reached to heaven. And the top of the ladder was the face of a man, carved out of fire. There were 12 steps leading to the top of the ladder, and at each step leading to the top were human faces, on the right and on the left... and the face [on top was] one of fire... [and was] exceedingly terrifying...”

The ladder in Jacob’s dream could be construed as representing a direct lineal connection between God and man, or the sons of God and man - the Nephilim patrimony of the twelve tribes of Israel fathered by Jacob. The “exceedingly terrifying” face of fire at the ladder’s apex is assumed to be God, although it could certainly be deemed a Luciferian apparition as well. The notion that the ladder represents the descent of the twelve tribes seems to be borne out by the twelve steps of the ladder, one for each of Jacob’s future sons. We find support for this idea in The Legends of the Jews, which tells Jacob’s story in greater detail.:

“Jacob took twelve stones from the altar on which his father Isaac had lain bound as sacrifice, and he said: ‘It was the purpose of God to let twelve tribes arise, but they have not been begotten by Abraham or Isaac. If now these 12 stones unite into a single one, then I shall know for a certainty that I am destined to become father of the twelve tribes.’ At this point a ... miracle came to pass; the twelve stones joined together and made one, which he put under his head, and at once it became soft and downy like a pillow... He dreamed a dream in which the course of world history was unfolded to him.”

The dream of Jacob’s Ladder is both a memory and a prophecy. It both foretells the coming of the twelve tribes, and alludes to their fallen angel lineage. In a bizarre addendum to this story, Jacob annoints the stone that served as his pillow with oil descended directly from Heaven, and then God casts the stone into “the Abyss” to serve as the cornerstone for his temple. But why would God want the cornerstone for His temple to be in the Abyss? Could it be because Jehovah’s Sumerian prototype, Ia, was known as “the Lord of the Abyss”?

The Serpent Messiah

One of the oddest symbols used frequently in reference to the Grail bloodline, and often in wildly unexpected contexts, is that of the serpent. We are all familiar with the serpent of Genesis, as the premier villian of Christian theology - the Devil himself. Consequently, the serpent has come to be viewed as emblematic of evil. How then are we to explain the strange episode, found in the Old Testament and in apocryphal Jewish legends, in which God instructs Moses to consturct a magical bronze serpent, the mere sight of which would save Israelites and bring death to their enemies? In some versions of this tale it was said that this serpent could cure men bitten by poisonous snakes. Others went so far as to say that it could actually save their souls. Biblical scholar James Kugel, commenting on the story, said this:

“The bronze serpent fashioned by Moses greatly troubled ancient interpreters. After all, a man-made object that had to power to cure snake bites if one simply looked at it - did this not smack more of magic than proper belief? What was worse, this same bronze serpent was later said to have become an object of idolotry in itself.”

The explanations arrived at by ancient interpreters are less than satisfactory. They claimed that it was not the snake which saved people, but God, and that by beholding it, they were beholding Him. But this fails to explain why a graven image was made to portray God, or why God would be symbolized as a serpent. Every conceivable aspect of this story is utterly in variance with what we know about orthodox Christianity or early Judaism. Another version of the tale, related in The Letter of Barnabas, says:

“...the Spirit, speaking to the heart of Moses, [tells him] to make a representation of the cross and of him who was to suffer upon it... Moses therefore made a graven serpent.”

This is very bizarre indeed. Not only do we have God represented as a serpent, but Christ as well. And it gets more interesting still. In the cabalistic science known as “gematria” (in which words are reduced to numbers), words sharing the same numeric value are viewed as having an identical essence on a higher level of meaning. In gematria, the words “messiah” and “serpent” can both be reduced to the same number: 358. So in cabalistic terms, the messiah and the serpent are one and the same.

For some gnostics and early Christian sects, the serpent of Genesis was viewed not as the villiain of the book, but as the hero. It was he, after all, who brought divine wisdom to man. God had told Adam not to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, for if he did he “would surely die.” But Adam and Eve did eat the fruit, and they didn’t die. In other words, God was wrong and the serpent was right. The serpent told the truth, and God had lied. Certain Gnostics and Christians thought that this was surely the intended subtext of Genesis. Evidence that they may have been correct can be seen in what amounts to an Aramaic pun. In this now-dead language, used at the time of Christ, the words for “serpent” and “to instruct” are nearly identical. The serpent had instructed Eve to eat of the Tree of Life, and in following his advice, she gained wisdom. Viewed in this light, how could the serpent not be seen as the hero of Genesis?

As previously noted, in Jewish apocrypha, there is a story in which Eve is seduced by the serpent of Eden (Samael), and it is he, not Adam, who fathers of Cain. Could this strange tradition have something to do with Moses and Christ, possibly Cain’s descendants, being connected to serpent symbolism? Perhaps. Both men were obviously privy to the traditions connected with their family - traditions that have not come down to us through mainstream Christianity. Some sects, such as the Ophite Gnostics, have promoted theologies which explicitly identify Christ with the serpent. According to author Stephen Flowers in Lords of the Left-Hand Path, these groups felt that:

“Christ came as a manifestation of the light-bearing serpent... The serpent brought humanity knowledge (gnosis) of good and evil (Genesis 3:1-7), and can further aid man in getting the fruit of eternal life, thus making man like God, or like Christ.”

Though this is purely a philosophical abstraction, it is interesting insofar as one would not logically expect to find even a single tradition in which Christ was identified as a serpent, let alone several. Yet the examples from Moses, the cabala, and the Ophite Gnostics would seem to indicate that people had some concrete reason for making such a connection. We know that for many years following the death of Moses, the bronze serpent made by him became a sacred object of idolotry for the early Israelites.

In some schools of esoteric Christianity, it is thought that the cross of Christ is synonymous with the Tree of Life. There is even a very old Latin motto which, when translated, states: “The wood of the Cross is the Tree of Knowledge.” If the cross of Christ is symbolically equal to the Tree of Life, it follows that Christ would likewise be emblematic of the serpent who dwelt in that Tree. This may explain an otherwise inexplicable but nonetheless common alchemical motif: the crucified snake. Though in the context of Christian iconography, this repreated identification of Christ with the serpent appears to make little or no sense, if one looks to religious ideas prominent well before the advent of Judaism, the symbolism is a perfect fit.

In many ancient cultures, such as Egypt, poisonous serpents were venerated. In Chaldea, they were symbols of God and of the Sun. This has caused some scholars to misconstrue the Chaldeans as being superstitious “snake worshippers”, but such is not the case. The serpent as a religious icon embodies a very high degree of sophisticated symbolism. Serpents are perhaps among the most earthbound of creatures, and yet were identified with the Sun. For the Chaldeans, this would have signified the union of Heaven and Earth, or spirit and matter. This is precisely the symbolism inherent in the notion of Christ: an intersection of attributes both heavenly and earthly, both human and divine. Because serpents shed their skin, they were associated with the idea of death and resurection, of rebirth and immortality. Once again, these are the same ideas central to the mythos of Christ.

A vestage of this so-called “serpent worship” can be found in an obscure Judaic sect called the Naasenes.3 The Naasean doctrine posited that God was a primordial hermaphrodite, as was Adam. The sect chose the serpent as a representation of God because it was thought that snakes possessed both sexes, and thus the power of self-generation. It was a creature like unto God. Is it possible that Christ, the serpent messiah, was a Naasene? Perhaps. It can be shown that the moniker “Jesus of Nazareth” is a misnomer, since the town of Nazareth did not exist at the time of Christ, which is why some protestant churches now refer to him as “Jesus the Nazarene” instead. The authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail have speculated that Jesus was a Nazorean, another obscure Jewish sect of whom Samson was a follower. But given the serpent imagery found in alternate traditions of the life of Christ, might not the “Naasene hypothesis” be every bit as likely? After all, it was prophecized that the messiah would take the form of a serpent as early as the time of The Book of Exodus.

That there is a conncetion between the Naasean tradition and that of Chaldea seems highly likely. Chaldea’s deified kings were associated symbolically with both the Sun and the serpent, and were viewed to be “sons of the Sun”, or sons of God. The solar/serpentine motif shows up in the names of many ancient gods and kings, including some central to our own investigation. The name “Marduk” can be translated as “Son of the Sun” of “Son of the Lord”, as “duk” means both “sun” and “lord”, but “mar” can also mean “serpent”, giving this title the alternate meaning “Serpent of the Sun”, or “Serpent of the Lord.” As you may recall, the name of the South American tutelary deity “Quetzlcoatl” is also said to mean “Serpent of the Sun.” In ancient Egypt the word for “serpent” was “sir”, which allows us to translate “Osiris” as “Sun Serpent Lord.” And the name of the Chaldean tutelary deity “Oannes” can be translated into the nearly identical “Sun Lord Serpent.” Furthermore, you will recall that the South American god “Noach Yum Chac” (obviously connected with Noah) is supposed to have written a text titled Proof that I am a Serpent.

Though the serpent imagery is obviously mere symbolism, it nonetheless constitutes a symbol central to the identity of the Watchers and their offspring - one taken seriously by them, as it would later be by the Merovingians. Could it be a symbol of their heritage, derived from some illustrious (or perhaps sacred) forebear, a figure intimately connected to the idea of the solar serpent, perhaps one of the Chadeans’ deified kings? It is quite possible. If this were the case, it would explain the legend of the serpent fathering Cain. You will note that the serpent heritage which was such a matter of pride for the god-kings of other cultures was a cause for shame in the context of Judaism. In the Judeo-Christian version of events, the Original Sin is miscegenation, not disobedience. Could it be that the woman presented in all monotheistic religions as the primordial matriarch was in fact seduced by a Chaldean king? The name “Samael” may hold some clues. It consists of “Sam”, which means “Sun”, and “ael”, which means “Son of God.” So Samael is a serpent who represents both the Sun and the Son of God, precisely the symbolism associated with Chaldean kings. Is this the reason that Cain, a man remembered by other cultures as a mighty king and a builder of great cities, was villianized and written out of the Old Testament almost entirely? Very possibly so.

It is assumed that Cain’s bloodline disappeared from Biblical events at the same time he vanished East of Eden, and that subsequent patriarchs derived their descent from Adam’s “third son”, Seth. However, a close examination of the genealogies connected to Cain and Seth reveals that such may not be the case. Except for a few extra names added to the list of Seth’s descendants, the two genealogies are nearly identical.

The correspondances should be obvious: “Jared” is “Irad”, “Mathuselah” is “Mahujael”, and so on. Both lists contain “Lamech”, and both contain “Enoch” (with an additional “Enos” to further confuse things.) It is as though the authors are retaining the true history, yet falsifying it just enough to throw off all but the most attentive reader. And indeed, the similarities have not passed unnoticed. Many Biblical scholars have commented on these odd genealogies, some suggesting that the one descending from Seth was an obvious fabrication, and that such a figure probably never existed. Cain had to be written out of Jewish history for some reason, but this task must have been quite difficult, because he was a very famous figure in the ancient world, known for having erected great cities across the length and breadth of Sumer and Chaldea. He built Ninevah, Erech, Agade (Akkad), and Lagash. He was looked to as a founding father by nations and cultures that seemingly had no connection to Jewish history. He built Babylon, and Babylonians were generally viewed as the natural-born enemies of the Jewish nation. Curiously, he appears to be a figure both central to Jewish history, and perplexingly outside of it.

There is perhaps more written in the Bible about Cain under his guise as King Nimrod of Babylon than there is written about Cain proper. The historical figure of Nimrod can, as we have shown, be conclusively identified with Cain, and like Cain, he is another character roundly demonized in the Old Testament. (He is also portrayed as having lived long after the time of Cain, something we clearly disagree with.) In early Jewish and Christian texts he is depicted as a fierce tyrant, a giant who hunted humans, and a king who “waged war against God.” But in the kingdoms he left behind he was worshipped as a god centuries after his death, and later kings would claim to be Nimrod reincarnated.

The Chaldean Connection

The genealogy of the Merovingian bloodline has for centuries been shrouded in mystery, and yet, we have been able to definitively trace it back to the Shepherd Kings of ancient Sumer. Subsequently, we have managed to fine-tune the focus of our investigation further still and many indications (both ancient and modern) seem to suggest that the role played by Chaldea was of pivotal importance. For instance, in The Book of Genesis, we are told that the Biblical patriarch Abraham was “a Chaldean from Ur.” For most readers, this seemingly insignificant factoid would undoubtedly slip by unnoticed, but to the student of ancient cultures, it is pregnant with portent, because Chaldea was known to be a Mecca of astronomy, astrology, and the black arts. So much so, in fact, that the word “Chaldean” in many ancient cultures was synonymous with “sorcerer.” Even so far away as Northern Europe, their term for sorcerer, “galdyr”, was rooted in “Chaldee.” The authors of Genesis obviously did their utmost to distance the figure of Abraham from the occult traditions of Chaldea, yet Abraham still appears to be an occultist both in biblical and extra-biblical texts. Note the following quote from Pseudo Eupolemus:

“Abraham excelled all in nobility and wisdom; he sought and obtained the knowledge of astrology and the Chaldean craft... he traveled to Phoenicia and dwelt there. He pleased the Phoenician king by teaching the Phoenicians the cycles of the Sun and Moon, and everything else as well... [in Egypt] Abraham lived in Heliopolis with the Egyptian priests and taught them much: He explained astrology and the other sciences to them.”

From Artapanus:

“Abraham... came to Egypt with all his household to the Egyptian king Pharothothes and taught him astrology.”

And from Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews:

“...before the coming of Abraham, the Egyptians were ignorant of these sciences, which thus traveled from the Chaldeans into Egypt, [and then] passed to the Greeks.”

It is clear from these quotes that Abraham travelled far and wide not to preach the gospel of the “one true God”, but rather to spread the wisdom of the Chaldean craft. These Chaldean sciences seem to echo the teachings of the Watchers, and pertained to geometry, astronomy, and the movements of the planets and stars. Compare the lore of the Watchers to what Philo records about the Chaldeans:

“The Chaldeans exercised themselves most especially with astronomy, and attributed all things to the movement of the stars, believing that whatever is in the world is governed by forces encompassed in numbers and numerical proportions... seeking out the numerical arrangement according to the cycles of the Sun and Moon, the planets, and the fixed stars… .”

The parallels between the Watchers and the Chaldeans become greater still when viewed in the light of a tradition cited by Eusebius, who wrote: “Abraham traced his ancestry to the giants. These dwelt in the land of Babylonia. Because of their impiety, they were destroyed by the gods.” So there you have it. These two traditions (of the Watchers and of the Chaldeans) sound so identical because they are identical - one and the same. Were the Chaldeans the descendants of the Watchers, and executors of their tradition? Such an idea is certainly reinforced by the fact that the Hebrew word for “Watcher” is “Ir”, which sounds similar to the name of the Chaldean city “Ur”, as well as “Ar”, the Sumerian word mentioned previously that is symbolized by the pentagram (and means “Shining Ones”). Also, the Watchers were called specifically, “the watchers of the heavens”, a very appropriate title for a people (like the Chaldeans) so preoccupied by astronomy. Could it be that Ur was the primordial city-state of the Watchers? Very possibly. Ur is considered so ancient that to the modern mind it has become synonymous with antiquity itself. All of this would appear to suggest that Abraham’s status as a Chaldean from Ur may indeed be very telling. It also seems that Abraham is far more than merely a man who “traced his ancestry to the giants.” Remember, it was said that “Abraham excelled all in nobility and wisdom.” In ancient times “nobility” did not refer to a man’s demeanor - it meant of noble birth. And as we will ultimately reveal, the figure known as Abraham was of very noble birth indeed.

For the time being however, we will continue our study of the Chaldean saga by looking into the story of King Gudia. Though one of the most illustrious of the Sumerian/Chaldean monarchs, Gudia remains a relatively obscure personage in terms of mainstream history. Gudia was both priest-king and architect, a builder of great cities and temples, not unlike Cain/Nimrod. And it just so happens that Nimrod was Gudia’s patron saint, as well as having been his ancestor. Gudia was like many of the Old Testament prophets, in that he was prone to dreams and vision. In one such dream, Nimrod himself appeared to the king, revealing to him the blueprints of a temple he wished to be erected in his honor. Upon waking, Gudia lost no time setting in motion plans to construct the Temple of Nimrod, a structure that would eventually be seen as one of the most magnificant edifices of its day.

The reign of Gudia witnessed a flourishing of culture and civilization in his region. He wandered the full length and breadth of Mesopotamia (and often beyond) to amass lumber, blocks, and precious metals for his many projects. He not only built new cities and temple, but rebuilt old ones as well. Ruling from his capitols of Lagash and Ur, he preferred not to be seen as a king, but rather as a priest and prophet. He was known simply as the “Good Shepherd”, and may in fact have refused the title of king (although his name does appear in the King’s List.)

Of all the many kings that reigned over Chaldea or Sumer, only a handful of their names are known outside of specialist circles, or from readings of the Old Testament. Those that come to mind are Sargon, Kamurabi, Assurbanipal, and a few others. Why, then (or how) could a man of Gudia’s stature have simply vanished into the mists of history? A possible answer was suggested upon reading that in Gudia’s time and culture there were no letters equivalent to “G” or “I.” Substituting the closest equivalent to those letters results in something both startling and altogether unexpected: Judea.

Is it be possible that Judah, the son of Jacob from whom Jews derive their name, could in fact have been a Chaldean priest-king? Are Gudia and Judah one and the same? Turning to the Old Testament in search of information that would either corroborate or disprove altogether such a bizarre thesis revealed passages so scant and so strange as to be of no help whatsoever in either regard. Further searches in Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews and Louis Ginzberg’s Legends of the Jews proved equally fruitless. How could a man from whom the entire Jewish tribe adopted their name be so little documented in three such major works documenting Jewish history and folklore? It was both perplexing and mysterious, like trying to conceive of a New Testament that featured only a half-dozen off-handed references to Christ. It defied all logic. And it seemed that logic was the only means left to pierce this apparent conspiracy of silence.

So it was that the ancient Chaldean King’s List was consulted again, the reasoning being that if Gudia and Judah were the same figure, perhaps other names in close proximity on the list might have a familiar ring. Four lines above Gudia on the list was a king named “Irarum.” Though not precisely identical to “Abraham”, it was the only name on the list with so familiar a ring to it. Remember that these names were not only spelled and pronounced differently from culture to culture, but also often in the same culture. Irarum had a son named “Dar”, who also went by the title “Asahk” (literally, “Son of God”). Asahk’s son was “Khab” (or “Khabulum”), and his son in turn took the royal title “Akhab” (“Son of Khab”). He in turn fathered Gudia. So if we take into account the sound of these names in their respective order, we arrive at something quite extraordinary:

*

“Irarum” is the same as “Abraham”
*

“Asahk” is the same as “Issac”
*

“Akhab” is the same as “Jacob”
*

“Gudia” is the same as “Judah”

So with one notable exception (the extra figure of “Khab” or “Khabulum”), we find in the Chaldean King’s List an almost perfect reflection of the Old Testament line of patriarchs.

At this point it is virtually impossible to ascertain what any of this really means. Were the Chaldeans all Jews? Were the people who called themselves Jews really Chaldeans? Were both merely different nations or tribes of an essentially Sumerian populace? Could it be that the so-called “Shepherdic Jews” were not so named because they had been shepherds, but because they claimed descent from a priest-king known as the “Good Shepherd”? Remember that this was the same title used to refer to Christ, who acted in the capacity of a priest-king without a throne. Christ, too, is said in some early traditions to have been a Chaldean, an idea we will explore in due course.

The Chaldean tradition, and its secret gnosis, is intimately linked with astronomy, astrology, geometry, architecture, and magic; all topics central to our ongoing inquiries. But there’s more. It was said that Gudia practiced the “Chaldean rite” of bull sacrifice - a practice that passed from Chaldea to Egypt, and eventually, to many parts of the ancient world. Significantly, this rite is said to have originated in Atlantis, and Gudia, like the Atlantean kings, kept the sacrificial bulls in his own palace. Further, when Gudia’s ancestor appeared to him in a vision and gave him specifications for the construction of a magnificent temple, the building thus erected was a seven-stepped ziggurat. Legend tells us that an identical structure once existed as the royal palace on Atlantis.

By reviving Atlantean architecture and religious ritual, Gudia seemed to be trying to build a bridge between the past and the present, or to reconstitute the past in the present. His chosen title, “Gudia” (“Lord/King Ia”) harkens back to Sumer’s first deified king. Within two centuries of his death, Babylonians worshipped him as the “Divine Gudia”, and put statues of him in their temples. The reign of Gudia is reckoned by some scholars to have been around 2400 BC. By the time Judaism began to coalesce some 900 years later, Gudia and his illustrious forebears would have become mythic figures in an oral tradition. Though there is little proof beyond what we have presented to link the figures of Gudia and Judah, there are references to Judah being a ruling king in rabbinic lore, including descriptions of a crown, royal scepter, and royal signet ring. And although orthodox Judaism seems to have rejected most of what constitutes the Chaldean tradition, there are indications that these ideas were preserved on a sub rosa level, to reemerge later in a most unexpected context.

Christ the Chaldean

And did those feet in ancient time

Walk upon England’s mountain green?

And was the Holy Lamb of God

On England’s pleasant pastures seen?

- William Blake, Jerusalem

As the above lines from William Blake’s 18th century poem Jerusalem reveal, the tradition that Christ came to England is one that is both widespread and long-standing. Indeed, Roman chroniclers began referring to it as early as the reign of Tiberius Caesar, who died in 37 AD (only four short years after the presumed date of Christ’s own death). It was in Glastonbury, Cornwall, that the first Christian church was built, purportedly by Christ himself.

For those unfamiliar with the story, it is well-documented that Christ’s uncle, Joseph of Arimathea made frequent trips to England in the course of his travels as a tin merchant. As the story goes, Jesus often accompanied his uncle on these journeys, and ended up spending a good deal of time in Cornwall during his well-known “lost years.” It was here that he conducted the early years of his ministry, and legend records that he constructed a rather large house for the habitation of his mother, Mary. It was this house which, pursuant to the crucifixion, became recognized as the first Christian church in the world. And this first Christian church was known by a number of names, such as “the wattle church”, “the old church”, and perhaps most significantly, “the Culdee church.” In other words, “the Chaldean church.”

In Thomas Campbell’s Reullura, we read:

“The pure Culdees

Were Alby’s4 earliest priests of God

Ere yet an island of her seas

By foot of Saxon monk was trod.”

In E. Raymond Capt’s marvelous book The Traditions of Glastonbury, he states: “The first converts of the Culdees... were the Druids of Britain, who found no difficulty in reconciling the teaching of the Culdees with their own teaching of the resurrection and the inheritance of eternal life.” In addition, the Druids had long believed in the coming of a messiah - a messiah named “Jesu.” They also shared the Chaldean preoccupation with sacred geometry and astronomy. And too, they had the odd habit of referring to God as “the ancient of days.” Clearly these two groups’ traditions had a shared origin of some sort. Capt continues:

“Culdees are recorded in church documents as officiating at St. Peter, York, until AD 939. According to some church authorities, the Canons of York were called ‘Culdees’ as late as the reign of Henry II (AD 1133-1189). In Ireland, a whole county was named ‘Culdee.’ The names ‘Culdee’ and ‘Culdish’ cling tenaciously to the Scottish church, and its prelates until a much later date.”

The Culdee phenomenon appears to be little known, little discussed, and even less understood. Nonetheless, over the centuries a fascinating number of theories and legends have become attached to them: theories and legends that are all the more fascinating in that they seem to overlap with much of our own research. What follows are some of the fundamental assumptions held about the Culdees, as collected and preserved by Arthur Edward Waite in his New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry:

*

The Culdees were Druids.

*

They were identical with the Chaldeans mentioned by the prophet Daniel.
*

They were priests in Assyria and can also be traced to Babylon.
*

They were Casideans, Essenes, Therapeutae, and Magi.
*

Beneath their cloak of Christianity they concealed a secret doctrine.
*

They were mathematicians and architects at the time of the early Roman emperors.
*

They were the builders of King Solomon’s Temple.
*

The Culdees of York were all Masons.
*

They denied the personality of Jesus - meaning the historical personality - and also the existence of the Devil.
*

The Culdee monks were the schoolmasters and architects of their time.
*

It was thought that the historical allegory of the Round Table, as well as the quest for the Holy Grail, referred in mystical terms to Culdee rites.

If the foregoing statements are indeed accurate, it would appear that there was the presence of a Templar-like fraternity in England for a full thousand years before the advent of the Knights Templar. And not just in England, but throughout the British Isles. The Culdees had commandaries, schools and churches in Wales, Ireland and Scotland as well. It is said that despite pressure from Rome, the Culdees remained a very strong presence right up to the time of the Norman conquest5, which began in 1066. The timeframe here seems highly significant, as 1066 is only a few decades before the founding of the Order of Sion and the Knights Templar by Godfroi de Bouillon in 1090.

Is it purely coincidental that an organization whose history spans over a thousand years should essentially vanish, and in a matter of mere decade a group whose outlook seems nearly identical should emerge in another part of the world? Most of what the historians assert about the Culdees is incredibly similar to what was said of the Templars. Let us compare: both groups were said to possess a secret doctrine which they concealed behind the facade of Christianity. Both groups denied Christ in a sense. Both groups were architects. And both groups were associated with the Holy Grail, as well as with Solomon’s Temple.

There definitely seems to be a continuity of belief, purpose and action between the two groups. Certainly the mystery surrounding both groups appears to be the same mystery. But if these two groups represent different manifestations of the same esoteric tradition, it is not simply a tradition whose origin came about after the crucifixion of Christ. The tradition can clearly be traced to the Chaldean King Gudia, and further still to his role model and patron saint, Nimrod/Cain.

1 “Asmodeus” contains that root word, “Az”, that was yet another title of Cain.

2 According to Louis Ginzberg, Nimrod did this because he feared Abraham “would rise up against him and triumphantly give the lie to his religion” - a polytheistic cult in which Nimrod himself was worshipped as a god.

3 “Naas” is the Hebrew word for “serpent.”

4 England was then called “Albion.”

5 In other locations, such as Ireland, their influence remained strong well into the fourteenth century.

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